


Spin Cycle

by writingwithmolls



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: "laundry au", Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Meet-Cute, Multi, Polyamory, but really it's a meet dumb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 08:34:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27847766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingwithmolls/pseuds/writingwithmolls
Summary: When Edelgard accidentally ends up mixing some of her laundry with Byleth's she thinks she can just sneak it out of the machine unnoticed. Unfortunately, she learns that there's very few worse ways to meet her new neighbor and her wife.
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault/Edelgard von Hresvelg, Dorothea Arnault/Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth, Dorothea Arnault/My Unit | Byleth, Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 22
Kudos: 71





	Spin Cycle

Edelgard was never a fan of laundry day.

She always ended up doing it alone on a Saturday, feeling the emptiness of her apartment all around her as if it were a close friend. After growing up with a personal army of siblings and then living with roommates or lovers, she rarely was doing a load of laundry just for herself. Edelgard was accustomed to her older sisters slipping in a shirt that they wanted to wear to a party, Hubert tossing in a few socks when she asked, or Hilda refusing to do  _ any _ of her own laundry, insisting that they would be “wasting water.”

Now, she didn’t live with her sister, or friend, or  _ definitely _ not her ex and the laundry basket felt light in her arms.

Her apartment in a new city didn’t have its own washer and dryer, so she would need to head down three flights of stairs to use the communal ones. The laundry room itself was dim and the floor would constantly be a bit damp from the washers. It was hardly indicative of the whole apartment building—her own space was rather clean—but there was something grating about listening to the eight machines spin and squeak infinitely.

Edelgard’s alarm went off and she sighed, turning off her music and shoving sandals on her feet to make the trek downstairs. Five months alone and she was still unaccustomed to the silence of her home. It was moments like these, as she locked the door behind her and tucked her keys into her pocket, that she would feel the sinking feelings that floated through the air like shitty air conditioning. Maybe she knew that becoming a journalist was never the safe option, but she didn’t know the drifting that came with it. The new jobs and new cities. The lovers that came and went and the friends that never kept contact for too long. She nearly fell off the last step as she approached the laundry room, one of the dryers screaming in a terrible shrill that rattled her brain.

When she opened the door, she was the only person in the room, the washer’s cycle slowly coming to an end. Edelgard hummed to herself quietly as it beeped, checking that one of the dryers were open. Even though there were four washers, only two were in working order, the others with notes warning not to use it or else the room might flood.

Flipping the lid on the machine, Edelgard got to work attempting to fish all of her clothes out. Unfortunately, it was the kind that loaded on the top and she had to basically hang on the edge in order to get the clothes at the bottom. One of her sweaters was in the washer, but she left it in the machine. She didn’t want to risk putting her knits through the dryer, so she would gather the more delicate clothes and hang them back in her apartment.

The clothes were wet in her arms as she carried them across the room to the open dryer, tossing in a dryer sheet with them. It took two trips, but she was able to get them all in with only the sweater resting at the bottom of the washer, ready to be brought back up with her. Edelgard had her back to the door as she pressed the start button three times on the machine before it finally roared to life.

When she turned back, a woman had dumped her basket into a washer and started it with no hesitation. Edelgard wasn’t even sure how she slipped into the room so silently, apart from the sounds of the machines being able to mask most of the sounds. She watched as the woman set a timer on her phone before smiling at her and leaving Edelgard alone in the strange room once more. Her blue hair was wild and obscured half her face and Edelgard had to admit that the shape of her body was imprinted in her mind with her sweatpants and crop top. She had never seen such a woman in her building, although she had to admit she didn’t know most of her neighbors—she spent most of her time out and about or locked up in her apartment with coffee and a blank page.

It took Edelgard a moment to realize that the woman had put her clothes in the single machine that was open and working—the one that she had left her sweater resting in.

She turned on her heels and opened the door, but the woman was already gone, just an empty hallway greeting her.

Lovely.

Edelgard cursed under her breath, watching the light in the corner flicker before trying the door on the washing machine. She could hear it begin to fill up with water, the lid already locked to prevent anyone from doing exactly what her plan was—digging through another’s clothes. She could only imagine the sweater spinning around the second time and the embarrassment of the situation swirled within her as well.

How was she expected to explain this to the handsome stranger?

She began to pace the room, testing the door of the washer one final time before giving up. The timer showed that there was thirty two minutes left on the cycle before blinking to thirty one.

How had the woman even managed to miss the sweater? It was bright red, it didn’t blend into the interior at all. Edelgard cursed and began to march back up the stairs, nearly losing her sandal as her feet slammed against the steps. She began to formulate a plan and had a pretty solid one by the time she was back in her apartment. If she brought her laptop downstairs with her to the laundry room, she could wait for the timer to go off and rescue her sweater before the other person could even make it to her clothes. Then there would be no need for an awkward explanation or unneeded conversation.

“It’s fine, El,” she muttered to herself, a habit that she had picked up to combat the steady silence. “You aren’t going to need to talk to her.”

The walls didn’t answer, so she grabbed her laptop and traveled back to the shoddy room. Once again, there was no one there but the blinking timer and screeching machines. The other two usable dryers were tumbling again, meaning someone had come in and out. With twenty minutes left she sat down on the folding chair in the corner, the cold metal biting at the backs of her thighs as she picked up the story where she left off.

The tip-tap of Edelgard’s typing joined the orchestra of terrible sounds as she tried to work her way through the boring story. She had come to Garreg Mach on a lead that brought her investigative journalism nowhere. Edelgard could interview as many of the Church’s leaders as she wanted, but there was no way to get to the bottom of things without working her way up to the Archbishop, who plainly refused to talk to the journalist that was stirring up the local papers.

The story was a drag, but it was better than thinking about what she had to accomplish once the timer hit zero. Edelgard attempted to ground herself by playing the best, worst, likely scenario game as she wrote another paragraph describing the possible crimes of the church.

Best: she would be able to get the sweater undetected.

Worst: the woman would catch her in the act of shuffling through her laundry.

Likely: Edelgard would have to ask the woman to retrieve her sweater, explaining the situation.

Edelgard rolled her shoulders back and powered through the rest of the paragraph, eying the machine wearily at the end of each sentence. She was in the midst of trying to figure out a strong closing line that her editor would likely cut from the final piece when the ring of the machine managed to chime over the roar of the others.

She sprang up from her seat, closing her laptop and placing it on the chair as she waited for the spin cycle to come to a stop. The machine gave a final whirl before a sharp  _ click _ signaled that the lock had opened. Edelgard flung the lid open and began to dig through the pile of unknown, soaking wet clothes.

Even though she was hoping the red would be easy to spot, plenty of the other shirts were in deep reds or burgundies. Her hand caught on a bra with beautiful black lace that made her cheeks heat up as she pushed it aside.  _ Of course _ the laundry had to belong to the attractive woman. Edelgard groaned when she realized it wasn’t resting on the top and continued to dig, her feet lifting from the ground as she leaned over the rim of the washer to fish out her sweater. Her hand finally felt the knit fabric when there was a sound—a voice—behind her.

“Um. Can I help you?”

Edelgard’s head shot up as her hand was still guiltily resting in the machine. The whole point of the best, worst, likely scenario was that the worst was hardly plausible. And yet, here was the woman with the bright eyes and confused expression that stood on the other side of the room.

“Well, I—” Edelgard started, but realized her voice had turned into a squeak. She tried again, clearing her throat and rubbing her hands together, still damp. “I had left a sweater in the washer when you added your clothes… I was just trying to get it before you came back.”

“Oh.” The woman shrugged. “You could have asked.”

Edelgard’s face was positively burning as she listened to her voice. It was much deeper than she had expected and it sounded warm and safe.

Not that it mattered when she was caught going through her laundry.

“Do you… want me to find it for you?” she asked.

“That would be wonderful,” Edelgard said as she exhaled, glancing nervously at the timer on her own laundry. There was still five minutes left, not enough time for her to have an excuse to sprint back to her room and hide for the next week. She stepped aside and the woman pushed through the clothes, not needing to hop up onto the machine to clearly see inside. She finally grabbed the sweater and handed it to Edelgard.

“This one is yours, I think. Too small.”

She had a lopsided grin as Edelgard snatched it, returning to her laptop and hoping that they could both just let the unfortunate circumstance drift far from memory. It would be even better if the woman left the room, but she just leaned against the washer as she typed into her phone. Edelgard guessed there were no empty dryers, so there was no choice but for the stranger to wait for hers to open.

Edelgard wrote “dear goddess HELP ME” into her document, hoping that she wouldn’t speak and just let the situation sit as a weird coincidence. The buzz of the machines, however, didn’t last long without conversation.

“I’m sorry, I guess I should have looked,” the woman finally said, scratching the back of her head. “My wife usually helps me with the laundry, but she’s on a date with her boyfriend and I told her I could handle it.” She chuckled—a pretty sound. “We’re still new to the building.”

Edelgard thought it would be rude to straight up  _ ignore _ her, so she winced and spoke, “I’ve only lived here for five months myself.”

The stranger nodded and Edelgard continued to type nonsense into her document, just to make her look busy. Unfortunately, her mind was sticking to certain words: “my wife,” “date,” “her boyfriend.” The woman had spoken the words so freely as if there was no shame in the ordeal.

Then, again. Perhaps there  _ was  _ no shame in it.

“My name is Byleth,” the stranger said. “What are you working on? Are you a student?”

Edelgard bristled at the “student” comment—a constant jab from coworkers in reference to her height. “Edelgard. I’m a journalist for  _ The Garreg Mach Guardian _ .”

“Fancy,” Byleth said with a low whistle. Edelgard’s face was still burning up and her heart was racing. She was sure it had everything to do with the embarrassing situation and nothing with the woman’s intense stare. “I’m a high school teacher.”

“You look young for that,” Edelgard said. The timer was almost done, she could see it winding down out of the corner of her eye. She truly hoped that she didn’t believe she was a student at the  _ high school _ she worked at.

“I teach history,” she said with a small smile. “And I’m going to be a softball coach when spring rolls around. My wife is a singer at the opera house… it’s an offshoot of Mittlefrank from Enbarr, are you familiar?”

“That’s my hometown,” Edelgard said, recognizing the opera house and the wonderful singers that graced the stage. She didn’t know that they had branched out, but it was peculiar that Byleth had brought up her wife a  _ second _ time. She was either just really in love or thought that Edelgard’s stunt with the laundry was a form of flirtation.

The dryer stopped tumbling and she stood abruptly, grabbing her basket from the side table and crossing the room. Byleth continued to wait patiently, hovering by her laundry and watching her stand on her tiptoes to reach the clothes.

Edelgard shoved all of her clothes back into the basket, the hot fabric burning at her skin as the room filled with the scent of the dryer sheet. She placed the damp sweater on top and then attempted to tuck her laptop under her arm. It nearly tumbled from it, Edelgard fumbling with the basket as she readjusted to make sure nothing dropped.

“Here, let me carry the basket,” Byleth said with an armful of laundry ready to go into the open machine. “I don’t want you to drop your expensive laptop.”

“I’m fine,” Edelgard said, feeling the laptop begin to slip once more. Byleth reached out and grabbed it, dropping some of her  _ own _ laundry. She laughed and it was hard not to giggle at the situation, Edelgard joining her. “Perhaps I could use the help.”

Edelgard put the basket down and took the laptop back, helping Byleth get her clothes into the dryer. Byleth lifted the basket with much more ease. “It’s the least I could do for the mix-up,” she assured. “I’m sorry about not looking.”

“I’m sorry for going through your laundry,” Edelgard amended.

The two of them walked up the stairs side-by-side, the smell of clean laundry sitting comfortably between them. Byleth asked what she was up to for the day and Edelgard told her that she had an article due, the woman just nodding and wishing her luck. Her blue eyes were even brighter when they reached the small lobby of the building, the sunlight drifting in. Byleth’s hands looked strong on the basket and Edelgard felt her brain drifting to the possibilities before she had to shake her head and bring herself back to reality:  _ wife _ .

Edelgard was about to enter the stairwell to the apartments when a voice rang across the lobby. “Byleth?”

“You’re back early.” A big smile appeared on Byleth’s face when she turned to see the woman. It warmed Edelgard’s heart that two people could be so in love, enough that just a voice and quick glimpse could bring so much happiness. “Did Ingrid have something to do?”

“They forgot that they promised a friend that they would go to the gym, it’s all good,” the woman said. “Although, I see you’re finding pretty ladies in our little building.”

Edelgard felt her cheeks heat up again as the woman—presumably Byleth’s wife—approached. She had ringlets of brown hair and vibrant green eyes that were accentuated by a light pink eyeshadow. If Byleth hadn’t said she sang, Edelgard would have assumed she was an actress with the way that she walked towards them with such ease and projected her voice across the lobby.

“This is Edelgard,” Byleth said. “She was going through our laundry.”

“I was  _ not _ —” Edelgard was about to argue when she saw the laughter in Byleth’s eyes. She supposed she was teasing, but she huffed anyway. “There was a mix-up with the laundry and Byleth offered to help me carry my clothes back up.”

Dorothea giggled, hiding her mouth with her hands. Her gold earrings caught the light, reflecting against the walls. “Nice to meet you, Edelgard. I’m Dorothea Eisner. We can walk and talk if you’re in a rush,” she said with a wink, clearly referencing Edelgard’s glances towards the door. The three of them began to walk up the stairs, Dorothea holding the door for both of them. “Your name is beautiful, it fits you well.”

“Thank you,” Edelgard said, ducking her head down as Byleth led the way. “I live on the third floor.”

“Got it,” Byleth said, stopping at that landing instead of continuing upwards. She attempted to shoulder the door open, but Edelgard brushed past her and opened the door. “Thanks.”

“We’re a floor up,” Dorothea said, still following her to her door.

Edelgard unlocked it, slipping her laptop on the counter before turning to Byleth with her hands out. “I can take the laundry from here, thank you for your help.”

“No problem,” Byleth said, her and her wife clearly peeking into the apartment behind her. Edelgard was glad that she took the time to tidy it up that morning and that she had left nothing embarrassing out on the coffee table.

“I like your flag,” Dorothea said with a knowing glance, the bi pride flag hanging in her living room. It was surely one perk of not having to live at home. “Say, would you like to come over to dinner tonight? My boyfriend was going to join… but they’re busy.”

“Oh, um.”

“She has an article due tonight,” Byleth said. Edelgard was shocked that she remembered the detail, being such a small aside. “How about tomorrow?”

Byleth handed the laundry over, her hands brushing with Edelgard’s. “That…” Edelgard thought of all the deadlines, all of her chances at making it in the industry. Then, she saw an image of herself sitting by the television again for dinner and her curiosity won out. “That sounds lovely.”

Byleth’s smile was so nice that she nearly dropped the basket. Dorothea leaned on her wife’s shoulder. “Sounds like a date, then. Glad to have met you—we can swing by tomorrow evening if that’s alright?”

“That sounds great,” Edelgard said, her eyes wide at the mention of  _ date _ . She wished them both a good day before closing the door and sinking to the tiles right behind it. Edelgard was glad that she was no longer living with her siblings who would tease her for the wide grin on her face and the red that was staining her cheeks.

Perhaps laundry day wasn’t that bad after all.


End file.
